Medical Anthropology as Cultural Anthropology

Book reviewed in this article:
Medicine, Rationality, and Experience: An Anthropological Perspective . Byron J. Good.
Knowledge, Power, and Practice: The Anthropology of Medicine and Everyday Life . Shirley Lindenbaum and Margaret Lock, eds.     

Exploring Medical Anthropology, Medical Anthropology and the World System: A Critical Perspective and Understanding and Applying Medical Anthropology

Exploring Medical Anthropology. Donald Joralemon. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1999. xiv+ 158pp.
Medical Anthropology and the World System:. Critical Perspective. Hans A. Baer. Merrill Singer. and Ida Susser. Westport, CT: Bergin and Garvey, 1997. + 276 pp.
Understanding and Applying Medical Anthropology. Peter J. Brown. ed. Mountain View, CA. Mayfield, 1998. xii. 451 pp.     

Critical Medical Anthropology

Critical Medical Anthropology. Merrill Singer and Hans Baer. Amityville, NY: Baywood Publishing Company, 1995. + 406pp.     

2009 Society for Medical Anthropology Conference: Changing Anthropology,Changing Society

Fifty years after the founding of the field of medical anthropology, the Society for Medical Anthropology of the American Anthropological Association held its first independent meeting on September 24-27, 2009, at Yale University.Fifty years after the founding of the field of medical anthropology, the Society for Medical Anthropology of the American Anthropological Association held its first independent meeting on September 24-27, 2009, at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. The conference, Medical Anthropology at the Intersections, drew an international audience of more than 1,000 scholars.In her opening remarks, program Chair Marcia Inhorn noted that medical anthropology has been interdisciplinary since its inception. This assertion was supported at a roundtable discussion, Founding Medical Anthropology and the Society for Medical Anthropology, which featured four of the field’s founders.Asked to identify the factors that led to the development of medical anthropology, the panelists emphasized the role of changes in the practice and landscape of medicine in the late 1950s and early 1960s in the United States. According to Hazel Weidman, who helped spearhead the Society for Medical Anthropology, medical personnel sought social scientists’ guidance in the new clinical environments created by the increasing involvement of U.S. physicians in global development work and by the community-oriented approach to mental health encouraged by the Community Mental Health Act of 1963. The novel inclusion of lifestyle as a determinant of health at this time also played a role, according to Clifford Barnett. Norman Scotch, author of a 1963 review that had helped define medical anthropology as a field, noted that physicians at the time were very interested in the possible applications of the social sciences to medicine [1,2]. Joan Ablon recalled that this emphasis on application led some academic anthropologists to dismiss the medical anthropologist as a “handmaiden to the doctors.” Despite such resistance, interest in medical anthropology as a sub-field was clearly growing among anthropologists. When Weidman helped organize the first gathering of medical anthropologists at an anthropology conference in 1967, attendance was twice what was expected. Panel organizer Alan Harwood noted that the Society for Medical Anthropology transformed its newsletter into a professional journal, Medical Anthropology Quarterly, in 1983. According to Inhorn, the society has 1,300 members today.For the panelists, medical anthropology’s potential for application makes it a compelling scholarly pursuit. As Barnett stated in explaining his decision to work in anthropology: “If you know how a society works, you can change it.”     

2009 Society for Medical Anthropology Conference: Reflections on the Future of Anthropology

In his plenary session entitled Five Questions on the Future, Harvard anthropologist Arthur Kleinman capitalized on the 2009 Society for Medical Anthropology Conference’s theme of Medical Anthropology at the Intersections to speculate on the future of the discipline.As he reflects on the field of anthropology, which had lacked theory, ethnography, and strong ties to public health and medicine, Harvard anthropologist Arthur Kleinman celebrates the accomplishments made by his contemporaries by saying, “My generation has made medical anthropology what it is today.” However, he is now looking to the future of the discipline, saying it must re-examine itself as a field.During the 2009 Society for Medical Anthropology Conference at Yale University, Kleinman capitalized on the theme of Medical Anthropology at the Intersections in his plenary session entitled Five Questions on the Future. Casting the conference itself as a kind of intersection, Kleinman not only lauded its size and diversity, but asserted that it marked a pivotal moment in which medical anthropology must re-evaluate its central questions.     

论＂医德＂的基本范畴

医德是医疗卫生领域精神文明建设的重要部分,也是调整医务人员与病人、医务人员之间以及与社会之间关系的行为准则。医德范畴是指人们对现代医务人员职业道德和医患关系的总结,它不仅概括了医生所应履行的职责义务,而且反映着一段时间内医患关系的本质。本文通过对医德范畴内,医生的权利和义务、责任和良心、功力和荣誉、审慎和保密四类问题的阐述,探讨当下医生在工作中应该保持何种心态,如何与患者进行沟通,以期更好地提供医疗服务。     

On the Medicalization of Medical Anthropology

The following address was presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society for Medical Anthropology (SMA), November 21,1997, Washington, DC, by outgoing SMA president Carole Browner. It has been edited slightly for publication.     

The Contribution of Medical Anthropology to a Comparative Study of Culture: Susto and Tuberculosis

Results of studies of the popular illness susto and the biomedical entity pulmonary tuberculosis are offered to illustrate how comparisons of sick and well people can elucidate societal processes in cultural anthropology.     

Distinguished Lecture in General Anthropology: The Anthropology of Trouble

This essay was presented as the Distinguished Lecture in General Anthropology at the 91st Annual Meeting of the American Anthropological Association, December 4, 1992, in San Francisco, California.     

Medical Anthropology: Contemporary Theory and Method, Revised Edition

Medical Anthropology: Contemporary Theory and Method, Revised Edition. Carolyn F. Sargent and Thomas M. Johnson. eds. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 1996 (cloth and paper), xxi. 557.